Interestingly enough I have been thinking about this very problem this St. Pat’s day. I don’t think I’d thought of it before but this morning at breakfast it hit me: Irish Luck?! What kind of sick irony is that. ;)

‘Insane Irish!’ from Braveheart may be appropos here. The fact that only clan warfare existed at that time is double-ironic.(I’m a serious Mel Gibson fan, but Stephen is my favorite character by far.)

Choosing to claim lucky status in the face of all these ‘troubles’ is a trait that should be our main import from Ireland; not green beer or corned beef and cabbage (I know: that’s as American as Fortune Cookies).

Oh, and widespread U.S. anti-Irish immigration sentiment/discrimination would be a great stem. (Smaller than the other catagories because only a subset of Irish people experienced it; not because it was less of a hardship.)

I’ve lived in Ireland all my life and I’ve never once used or heard anyone use the phrase “Luck of the Irish”. We don’t say or even think it, bit like “top o’ tha marnin”. Or going on holiday and finding the gun-totting redneck stereotype absent from Massachusetts. I guess every nation has its cultural crosses to bear?

Just making sure everyone is aware that the term came about to deride irish people here in the states. Also once a ton of irish people became rich/successful it was a way of saying “well of course he’s rich, it’s the luck of the irish.” so to say that their success was merely luck.

I think what that diagram really shows is not Irish luck, but Irish optimism! My family is Irish (mother born in Dublin), and one consistency I see in them is that in spite of a slightly melancholy, fatalistic outlook and a dark sense of humor, they are oddly optimistic.

Cute, but, not historically accurate. The clan warfare ended in the middle ages, the potato famine was a gift from the English (so to speak) in the middle of the 19th century, and the “terrorism” was a response to the English, in one small corner of the country.